Aha. Good to know. So the combined land area of California and South Carolina to get 1.2 billion kilowatts.
Okay, some quick math...
1.2 billion kilowatts * 24 hours * 365 days = 10,512,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours per year. Woohoo! That's almost three times the total US output in 2003. And all it took was land area equal to California, South Carolina, unrealistic wind consistency, and all of the material resources to build 1.2 million of those bastards. I was all wrong about wind power.
...the equivalent combined land area of California and South Carolina. I'm sure no-one would miss either, really.
In the course of nuclear power in the US, raw fuel has only used approximately 2% of the fissible energy potential. Much of this material can be taken out of the current storage pools and put to good use in newer reactors and without the previous longstanding concerns of weapons proliferation.
Since IFRs take so long to burn through the fuel, it will take quite some time to go through the waste and weapons material (which can also be used as a fuel source). By the time you get back to actually mining uranium for power again, let alone going to the oceans, a great deal will have passed.
Even if that were the case, effective large-scale fusion isn't available.
You might as well say, "We wouldn't need to worry about the amounts of trace elements if we could mine nearby asteroids." It's nice to say, but it lacks any useful info.
Conservation is fine for you (and me), but we are not everyone.
Hydrogen? This is not a power source. It is a power storage medium. You must generate free hydrogen from other sources...like large-scale power facilities.
I can't speak to fully electric cars, but I love my Toyota hybrid.
As for your premise about nuclear being unreasonably dangerous, please keep in mind that about 20% of all power each year in the US comes from nuclear power. How many accidents have there been? Fewer than other large-scale electrical power sources. How many people have been hurt? No really, look it up.
Three Mile Island, the poster boy for "big bad dangerous nuclear" resulted in exactly how many deaths? Zero. Injuries? Zero. Disease? Zero. If you hopped on a plane to move away from the TMI area a year before the accident, you received more radiation than if you stayed put. Yes, it was that small even though it was a partial meltdown. Remember, meltdown refers to the fuel inside the plant, not the plant itself.
But we aren't talking about coal or oil. No one (or at least very few) is saying that they are preferable. The discussion is about nuclear energy which incidentally has higher power yields and comparable environmental costs to wind.
The trouble isnt that Wind is more costly, just that we allow the Plutocrats to keep polluting our communities.
Not exactly. The trouble is that the US consumed 3.8 trillion kilowatts of electricity in 2003. Wind can't even approach that number. Run the numbers for a windmill farm times the area in the US fit for wind power...and notice how it's not even close enough to pretend. This isn't rocket science. Simple arithmetic should suffice.
In the US, decommissioning costs are included in the monthly bills to customers -- it's part of their day to day costs and much more accurately reflects the actual cost of nuclear power.
Just because you Brits sucked at accounting doesn't mean that we all do.
The US has coal reserves for about 250 years at current consumption levels. Not trivial to be sure, but not quite 1,000 years.
On the other hand, newer nuclear plants can extend the life of existing uranium reserves to a length of time longer than the entire history of humanity up until this point. And the use of IFR/AFR and other modern designs can do so without mining another once of uranium for some time by processing existing weapons and waste.
There is a bigger issue with solar and wind than simply cost: total power output. Demand for electricity is not going to drop dramatically and in all likelihood will continue to increase.
Now what about wind... Allow me to direct you to The Earth Policy Institute, an organization with a decidedly alternative/renewable energy bias. (Not a bad thing, just making it clear that it has no reason to artificially lower their numbers to make wind look bad.) Their examination of wind power is quite optimistic. Pay special attention to their expectations: gathering hydrogen for fuel in cars, halting coal usage, etc. Now let's look at the data they used for that. They cite a total U.S. potential (not current, but potential) of 1,221,191 megawatts. With that comes, I assume, the expectation that every possible free tract of land had a windmill farm stuck on it.
~1kW per square meter is what you have to work with in solar energy. When you have 8-12% efficient solar panels, that means you can get up to 80-120W per square meter...for six hours per day in the desert without trackers...on a cloudless day... In areas with more cloud cover, shorter days in winter, etc. the numbers drop off dramatically. Then we calculate that consumer solar cells degrade by 2-5% every year of use and have a life span of ~30 years. Then keep in mind that you have to keep all of those cells clean -- more energy used for something besides keeping the lights on. Don't forget that you have to actually manufacture those solar cells which of course means clean rooms (the real reason behind the costs) and the aquisition and refinement of requisite building materials. And to top it all off, when you cover large tracts of land with solar cells, that land gets less sunlight. So yeah, we can all put solar panels on our homes, get by on what we get, and then deal with the health problems after a year with more than average rainfall causes refridgerators to cease functioning and food to rot.
Repeat after me: large-scale power cannot be a "good enough" proposition where a 5% shortfall is acceptable.
So I want to get a pencil and paper and work out the total amount of land area needed to sustain 3,848,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours (Yes! That's 3.848 trillion!) of electricity -- of which 53% of that currently comes from coal. Now if you come up with a calculation that if you completely covered the sunny state of Arizona with solar cells, it would still not be enough to replace just coal, you're on the right track. To top it all off, it costs about $30,000 on average to fit solar panels sufficient to power a typical house. How much would it cost to cover Arizona will solar cells?
Repeat after me: It doesn't matter how much you are willing to pay. Solar and wind alone cannot do the job.
Solar and wind are excellent candidates for supplementary energy sources. They are great for providing primary electricity to many residences (provided that folks can afford the $30K price tag). However, most folks will still need the grid as a backup and supplement. Hell, I'd be bullish on solar if for no other reason than the effective elimination of large-scale blackouts. But it still remains a supplementary energy source. There is far more to electricity demand than making sure the microwaves and personal computers have power.
So what can produce that much power? Coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. In the US, we have hundreds of years' worth of coal. Oil and natural gas reserves are far more finite and are needed for materials (plastics, vehicles, etc.). And that leaves us with nuclear. Existing models will blow through our uranium reserves in less than a century. However, models that aren't just a one-pass design can not only use existing nuclear waste, but also nuclear weapons material. AND they extend the pote
You will forgive my ignorance. I personally don't have the physics background. I simply got my information from George Stanford, a nuclear reactor physicist now retired from Argonne National Laboratory after a career of experimental work pertaining to power-reactor safety.
From The National Center for Public Policy Research:
"A breeder is a reactor that is configured so as to produce more fissile material than it consumes. A fast reactor can be designed and operated to be either a net breeder or a net burner. A thermal reactor is a net burner of nuclear fuel, but -- and this is very important -- all thermal reactors are prolific breeders of plutonium.
"A thermal reactor starts out with no plutonium at all, and soon has a lot of it. In the process, though, it burns more fuel (mainly uranium) than it gives back as plutonium, and therefore is not called a breeder.
"If IFRs can be either breeders or burners, why do some people insist on calling them breeders?
"Partly for historical reasons (originally, fast reactors were investigated because of their potential to breed), partly because of genuine confusion, and partly for the emotional impact, since "breeder" carries the subliminal connotation of runaway plutonium production. The central fact that those people are missing is that with IFRs you can choose not to breed plutonium, whereas with thermal reactors you make plutonium whether you want it or not."
Deaths from thyroid cancer: not sure, but thyroid cancer is highly treatable so definitely less than 500.
I just came across a assertion that there have been 3 deaths from thyroid cancer in Belarus. I don't know about the veracity of this claim, but it's certainly much lower than 500.
And another prominent resource: uranium. And another couple of resources that could be used in IFR power plants: spent fuel and nuclear warheads. The problem of spent fuel rods is largely solved. All we need now is the political will to get to it.
The purpose was to build a proliferation-proof breeder reactor...
Actually, the purpose was to build a proliferation-resistant burner reactor. Breeders create more plutonium. One of the aims for production IFRs is the reduction of plutonium. Hence they would be burner reactors.
Burying spent fuel is not the answer. There are better solutions like IFRs. With IFRs, you actually get rid of most of the actinides, you can use spent fuel from light water reactors, you can use reprocessed nuclear warheads, and you get a huge amount of electrical power from the exchange. From a nuclear waste disposal standpoint alone, IFRs are worth it.
By the way, don't listen to Fox News; It'll rot your brain.
Okay, I admit it. That is just weird to me. I'm a bit more than twice your age. The Soviet Union seemed very real to me as did the possibility of nuclear war at one time. Thanks. Now I feel old.:)
Deaths from TMI: zero. Injuries from TMI: zero. Long-term health dangers at TMI: none
No workers at the site got TMI-induced diseases and the nearest town received so little radiation that it was barely perceptable over the background. In other words, folks got more radiation flying on a plane anywhere in the world than they would have received if they had just stayed put. Hell, they received less radiation than the inhabitants of Denver.
Deaths of accident workers at Chernobyl: 31 Incidence of thyroid cancer among children: 1,791 Deaths from thyroid cancer: not sure, but thyroid cancer is highly treatable so definitely less than 500. Incidence of leukemia: not sure; higher than normal, but not significantly so. Long term health dangers: unknown, but wildlife in the restricted zone appears healthy and largely unaffected.
And Chernobyl was the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. Compare this to data from Brookhaven National Lab which correlated air pollution and its results over the entire area of the US. "The results imply some 37,000 premature deaths attributable to coal-fired electric power in the US every year -- with pollution control equipment in place." And if you want to compare long term hazards of radiation-induced cancers to the perils of Black Lung, be my guest.
Nuclear has been and likely will remain the safest large-scale method of power generation available to us in the immediate future.
Or maybe he recognizes most of the rhetoric against nuclear to be utter nonsense. Ralph Nader declared plutonium to be the most toxic substance known to man. It isn't. Not even close. Others suggested that the use of nuclear power would boil our rivers and oceans away. It doesn't. Not even close. It's repeated over and over that there are no ways to dispose of transuranic spent fuel. There is.
Environmentalists (myself included) need to get over this and move on. More people have died from the coal cycle each year than have ever died from nuclear accidents -- including Chernobyl. Renewable alternatives may potentially solve energy problems someday. Nuclear solves them today. It's not politics. It's just running the numbers.
Okay, fair enough. In what density and to what capacity *can* boiler-style solar facilities be built? What is their energy potential if adopted to the greatest realistic possibility (given the land area of the U.S. but subtracting unusable portions and areas that are already occupied with structures like roads and farmland)? What *can* we get out of this technology if we implemented it on a large scale?
Can plants like those meet the needs of the U.S. energy supply? This was my original question if you saw fit to apply even the most moderate forms of the principle of charity in the debate.
No, it is not an appeal to popularity. You were suggesting that alternative power sources such as boiler-style solar will satisfy power requirements. Power requirements include far more than residential neighborhoods. In the U.S., this requirement was 3.7 million megawatt-hours.
Our argument was about "the amounts of ground beef sold in the US" not your "favorite local burger shop." Our argument was about total power requirements, not just your house.
It is a strawman argument with regard to your post, I admit. I was simply heading off the seemingly inevitable "we just need to conserve" retort.
200MW "is estimated at $700 million..." 200 megawatts hunh? Nice. Ummm... Okay. US electricity demand was 3.7 million megawatt-hours in 2001. I would assume that this tower generates 200MW only when the sun is at its highest point. So that's really only 200MW at peak. What's the variability? What is the environmental impact? Deserts are ecosystems too. Will it affect precipitation in the area? Lower it? Increase it?
That's the funny thing about wondrous hypothetical energy sources: there are a lot of unknowns and a lot of research to be done before you can even think about using it.
Okay, so cite some numbers. Do the boiler-style solar plants make a significant dent in the 3.7 million megawatt-hours used by the U.S. in 2001?
I'm not attacking. I want to see the numbers. And please don't just suggest that the U.S. must first lower their usage to below 1 million megawatt-hours. As much as I would like to agree, it's not going to happen. You aren't going to get all 300 million Americans to care that much, and all 300 million Americans would need to get on board before the numbers drop significantly.
Besides, it's irrelevant. The real point isn't to reduce the amount of power; It's to make that power more efficient/less detrimental to the environment.
Basically, wind does not blow consistently nor sufficiently in all places. Take a look at the potential output of wind by wind enthusiasts themselves. Then compare that potential to 3.7 million megawatt-hours, what the U.S. used in 2001.
Remember that >90% of all life on this planet lives at or near the coastlines. The tides are vitally important to that life. If you take sufficient energy out of that system to make a significant difference in our energy needs, you may find major ecological problems in the system you took the power from.
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Okay, some quick math...
1.2 billion kilowatts * 24 hours * 365 days = 10,512,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours per year. Woohoo! That's almost three times the total US output in 2003. And all it took was land area equal to California, South Carolina, unrealistic wind consistency, and all of the material resources to build 1.2 million of those bastards. I was all wrong about wind power.
Heh heh... nice.
IFA/AFR reactors.
In the course of nuclear power in the US, raw fuel has only used approximately 2% of the fissible energy potential. Much of this material can be taken out of the current storage pools and put to good use in newer reactors and without the previous longstanding concerns of weapons proliferation.
Since IFRs take so long to burn through the fuel, it will take quite some time to go through the waste and weapons material (which can also be used as a fuel source). By the time you get back to actually mining uranium for power again, let alone going to the oceans, a great deal will have passed.
Even if that were the case, effective large-scale fusion isn't available.
You might as well say, "We wouldn't need to worry about the amounts of trace elements if we could mine nearby asteroids." It's nice to say, but it lacks any useful info.
He also completely ignored the one important point: nuclear power is not the same as nuclear weapons.
Nuclear is to weapon as electric is to chair.
Yes, just look at all of the deaths, injuries and increased disease from Three Mile Island.
Oh! That's right! There weren't any deaths, injuries or increased disease from TMI despite its status as the worst nuclear accident in US history.
Conservation is fine for you (and me), but we are not everyone.
Hydrogen? This is not a power source. It is a power storage medium. You must generate free hydrogen from other sources...like large-scale power facilities.
I can't speak to fully electric cars, but I love my Toyota hybrid.
As for your premise about nuclear being unreasonably dangerous, please keep in mind that about 20% of all power each year in the US comes from nuclear power. How many accidents have there been? Fewer than other large-scale electrical power sources. How many people have been hurt? No really, look it up.
Three Mile Island, the poster boy for "big bad dangerous nuclear" resulted in exactly how many deaths? Zero. Injuries? Zero. Disease? Zero. If you hopped on a plane to move away from the TMI area a year before the accident, you received more radiation than if you stayed put. Yes, it was that small even though it was a partial meltdown. Remember, meltdown refers to the fuel inside the plant, not the plant itself.
Not exactly. The trouble is that the US consumed 3.8 trillion kilowatts of electricity in 2003. Wind can't even approach that number. Run the numbers for a windmill farm times the area in the US fit for wind power...and notice how it's not even close enough to pretend. This isn't rocket science. Simple arithmetic should suffice.
In the US, decommissioning costs are included in the monthly bills to customers -- it's part of their day to day costs and much more accurately reflects the actual cost of nuclear power.
Just because you Brits sucked at accounting doesn't mean that we all do.
The US has coal reserves for about 250 years at current consumption levels. Not trivial to be sure, but not quite 1,000 years.
On the other hand, newer nuclear plants can extend the life of existing uranium reserves to a length of time longer than the entire history of humanity up until this point. And the use of IFR/AFR and other modern designs can do so without mining another once of uranium for some time by processing existing weapons and waste.
There is a bigger issue with solar and wind than simply cost: total power output. Demand for electricity is not going to drop dramatically and in all likelihood will continue to increase.
Now what about wind... Allow me to direct you to The Earth Policy Institute, an organization with a decidedly alternative/renewable energy bias. (Not a bad thing, just making it clear that it has no reason to artificially lower their numbers to make wind look bad.) Their examination of wind power is quite optimistic. Pay special attention to their expectations: gathering hydrogen for fuel in cars, halting coal usage, etc. Now let's look at the data they used for that. They cite a total U.S. potential (not current, but potential) of 1,221,191 megawatts. With that comes, I assume, the expectation that every possible free tract of land had a windmill farm stuck on it.
~1kW per square meter is what you have to work with in solar energy. When you have 8-12% efficient solar panels, that means you can get up to 80-120W per square meter...for six hours per day in the desert without trackers...on a cloudless day... In areas with more cloud cover, shorter days in winter, etc. the numbers drop off dramatically. Then we calculate that consumer solar cells degrade by 2-5% every year of use and have a life span of ~30 years. Then keep in mind that you have to keep all of those cells clean -- more energy used for something besides keeping the lights on. Don't forget that you have to actually manufacture those solar cells which of course means clean rooms (the real reason behind the costs) and the aquisition and refinement of requisite building materials. And to top it all off, when you cover large tracts of land with solar cells, that land gets less sunlight. So yeah, we can all put solar panels on our homes, get by on what we get, and then deal with the health problems after a year with more than average rainfall causes refridgerators to cease functioning and food to rot.
Repeat after me: large-scale power cannot be a "good enough" proposition where a 5% shortfall is acceptable.
So I want to get a pencil and paper and work out the total amount of land area needed to sustain 3,848,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours (Yes! That's 3.848 trillion!) of electricity -- of which 53% of that currently comes from coal. Now if you come up with a calculation that if you completely covered the sunny state of Arizona with solar cells, it would still not be enough to replace just coal, you're on the right track. To top it all off, it costs about $30,000 on average to fit solar panels sufficient to power a typical house. How much would it cost to cover Arizona will solar cells?
Repeat after me: It doesn't matter how much you are willing to pay. Solar and wind alone cannot do the job.
Solar and wind are excellent candidates for supplementary energy sources. They are great for providing primary electricity to many residences (provided that folks can afford the $30K price tag). However, most folks will still need the grid as a backup and supplement. Hell, I'd be bullish on solar if for no other reason than the effective elimination of large-scale blackouts. But it still remains a supplementary energy source. There is far more to electricity demand than making sure the microwaves and personal computers have power.
So what can produce that much power? Coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. In the US, we have hundreds of years' worth of coal. Oil and natural gas reserves are far more finite and are needed for materials (plastics, vehicles, etc.). And that leaves us with nuclear. Existing models will blow through our uranium reserves in less than a century. However, models that aren't just a one-pass design can not only use existing nuclear waste, but also nuclear weapons material. AND they extend the pote
Nuclear is to power what democracy is to political systems. Yes, it sucks. But sucks less than the alternatives.
You will forgive my ignorance. I personally don't have the physics background. I simply got my information from George Stanford, a nuclear reactor physicist now retired from Argonne National Laboratory after a career of experimental work pertaining to power-reactor safety.
I suggest you take it up with him.
From The National Center for Public Policy Research:
"A breeder is a reactor that is configured so as to produce more fissile material than it consumes. A fast reactor can be designed and operated to be either a net breeder or a net burner. A thermal reactor is a net burner of nuclear fuel, but -- and this is very important -- all thermal reactors are prolific breeders of plutonium.
"A thermal reactor starts out with no plutonium at all, and soon has a lot of it. In the process, though, it burns more fuel (mainly uranium) than it gives back as plutonium, and therefore is not called a breeder.
"If IFRs can be either breeders or burners, why do some people insist on calling them breeders?
"Partly for historical reasons (originally, fast reactors were investigated because of their potential to breed), partly because of genuine confusion, and partly for the emotional impact, since "breeder" carries the subliminal connotation of runaway plutonium production. The central fact that those people are missing is that with IFRs you can choose not to breed plutonium, whereas with thermal reactors you make plutonium whether you want it or not."
And another prominent resource: uranium. And another couple of resources that could be used in IFR power plants: spent fuel and nuclear warheads. The problem of spent fuel rods is largely solved. All we need now is the political will to get to it.
Other than that, great post.
Burying spent fuel is not the answer. There are better solutions like IFRs. With IFRs, you actually get rid of most of the actinides, you can use spent fuel from light water reactors, you can use reprocessed nuclear warheads, and you get a huge amount of electrical power from the exchange. From a nuclear waste disposal standpoint alone, IFRs are worth it.
By the way, don't listen to Fox News; It'll rot your brain.
Okay, I admit it. That is just weird to me. I'm a bit more than twice your age. The Soviet Union seemed very real to me as did the possibility of nuclear war at one time. Thanks. Now I feel old.
Deaths from TMI: zero.
Injuries from TMI: zero.
Long-term health dangers at TMI: none
No workers at the site got TMI-induced diseases and the nearest town received so little radiation that it was barely perceptable over the background. In other words, folks got more radiation flying on a plane anywhere in the world than they would have received if they had just stayed put. Hell, they received less radiation than the inhabitants of Denver.
Deaths of accident workers at Chernobyl: 31
Incidence of thyroid cancer among children: 1,791
Deaths from thyroid cancer: not sure, but thyroid cancer is highly treatable so definitely less than 500.
Incidence of leukemia: not sure; higher than normal, but not significantly so.
Long term health dangers: unknown, but wildlife in the restricted zone appears healthy and largely unaffected.
And Chernobyl was the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. Compare this to data from Brookhaven National Lab which correlated air pollution and its results over the entire area of the US. "The results imply some 37,000 premature deaths attributable to coal-fired electric power in the US every year -- with pollution control equipment in place." And if you want to compare long term hazards of radiation-induced cancers to the perils of Black Lung, be my guest.
Nuclear has been and likely will remain the safest large-scale method of power generation available to us in the immediate future.
Or maybe he recognizes most of the rhetoric against nuclear to be utter nonsense. Ralph Nader declared plutonium to be the most toxic substance known to man. It isn't. Not even close. Others suggested that the use of nuclear power would boil our rivers and oceans away. It doesn't. Not even close. It's repeated over and over that there are no ways to dispose of transuranic spent fuel. There is.
Environmentalists (myself included) need to get over this and move on. More people have died from the coal cycle each year than have ever died from nuclear accidents -- including Chernobyl. Renewable alternatives may potentially solve energy problems someday. Nuclear solves them today. It's not politics. It's just running the numbers.
Okay, fair enough. In what density and to what capacity *can* boiler-style solar facilities be built? What is their energy potential if adopted to the greatest realistic possibility (given the land area of the U.S. but subtracting unusable portions and areas that are already occupied with structures like roads and farmland)? What *can* we get out of this technology if we implemented it on a large scale?
Can plants like those meet the needs of the U.S. energy supply? This was my original question if you saw fit to apply even the most moderate forms of the principle of charity in the debate.
No, it is not an appeal to popularity. You were suggesting that alternative power sources such as boiler-style solar will satisfy power requirements. Power requirements include far more than residential neighborhoods. In the U.S., this requirement was 3.7 million megawatt-hours.
Our argument was about "the amounts of ground beef sold in the US" not your "favorite local burger shop." Our argument was about total power requirements, not just your house.
It is a strawman argument with regard to your post, I admit. I was simply heading off the seemingly inevitable "we just need to conserve" retort.
200MW "is estimated at $700 million..." 200 megawatts hunh? Nice. Ummm... Okay. US electricity demand was 3.7 million megawatt-hours in 2001. I would assume that this tower generates 200MW only when the sun is at its highest point. So that's really only 200MW at peak. What's the variability? What is the environmental impact? Deserts are ecosystems too. Will it affect precipitation in the area? Lower it? Increase it?
That's the funny thing about wondrous hypothetical energy sources: there are a lot of unknowns and a lot of research to be done before you can even think about using it.
Okay, so cite some numbers. Do the boiler-style solar plants make a significant dent in the 3.7 million megawatt-hours used by the U.S. in 2001?
I'm not attacking. I want to see the numbers. And please don't just suggest that the U.S. must first lower their usage to below 1 million megawatt-hours. As much as I would like to agree, it's not going to happen. You aren't going to get all 300 million Americans to care that much, and all 300 million Americans would need to get on board before the numbers drop significantly.
Besides, it's irrelevant. The real point isn't to reduce the amount of power; It's to make that power more efficient/less detrimental to the environment.
read this.
Basically, wind does not blow consistently nor sufficiently in all places. Take a look at the potential output of wind by wind enthusiasts themselves. Then compare that potential to 3.7 million megawatt-hours, what the U.S. used in 2001.
Remember that >90% of all life on this planet lives at or near the coastlines. The tides are vitally important to that life. If you take sufficient energy out of that system to make a significant difference in our energy needs, you may find major ecological problems in the system you took the power from.